When the boy stumbled into the lair of the Snake Goddess, he knew he was dying.
He knew it with the certitude of a child who’d never been wrong in his life. Blood seeped from the dirt-streaked gashes upon his chest and abdomen, soaking through his tunic and trousers before dribbling onto the mud at his sandaled feet. It was more blood than he’d ever seen—more blood than he thought could possibly be contained inside his scrawny frame. It stood to reason then that he was dying. How could someone bleed so much and still live?
Yet, just as surely as he knew he was dying, the boy also knew that he’d live. For he’d done what the Snake Goddess had asked of him. Had fought through a troop of enraged monkeys to wrest back the Amulet that had been stolen from her. The monkeys had been many. Worse, they’d been waiting for him. With teeth bared and claws sharpened. He fought through them all, punched and kicked and bit and screamed like his life depended on it—because it did.
In the end, he limped away with cuts and bruises, sprains and broken bones, and the worst bleeding he’d ever seen. A fatal injury. But he’d also come away with the prize: the Snake Goddess’s Amulet. Now, all he had to do was return it to her. Fulfill his end of the bargain.
In exchange, she’d promised him immortality.
The jungle led the boy deeper into the Snake Goddess’s lair. Guided him with parting branches and swaying vines. The jungle itself was alive, an extension of the Goddess’s magic. The magic frightened him, as much as it further bolstered his hope. If the Goddess could imbue a whole jungle with her otherworldly powers, surely it’d be a trifling for her to grant one scrawny boy eternal life.
The Snake Goddess awaited him at the end of a path thick with gnarled roots. The dead end doubled as the entrance to a cave, though even a child who’d never been wrong in his life knew that the cave was no place for a human. A dense fog veiled the darkened opening, barring entry. Its impenetrability was a kindness, designed to save wandering souls from their own curiosity.
The boy stood at the border between cave and jungle, and waited. He gripped the jade Amulet in his one good hand and waited, trusting the Goddess to hold up her end of the bargain.
Soon, a shadow slithered into the fog, at once darker than darkness and clearer than day. Its serpentine figure danced languidly at the cave’s entrance, twisting, undulating, until it settled into an upright posture, with two orb-shaped shadows staring out of the fog and directly into the boy.
“My, oh my.” The Goddess’s lilting voice brushed over the boy’s gooseflesh. “Just when I think I have you humans all figured out, you go and surprise me some more. I thought at worst you’d turn tail and run. At best perish in the attempt. Well, go on then. Give it to me.”
The boy’s grip on the Amulet only tightened.
“First, you give me what’s mine.”
The boy spoke in a stranger’s voice: strained, fading, terrified. Even a child who’d never been wrong in his life knew that he sounded pitiful, hardly in a position to grandstand before an almighty goddess. Still, he gripped the Amulet and refused to let go.
Something shifted within the fog. A smile-shaped shadow, as wide as the face upon which it crept.
“Tell me, child. What is it you seek? What drives your haste to deny mortality?”
He frowned. He’d never been wrong in his life, but that didn’t mean he was always good with words.
“I want to live forever.”
“Naturally. But why? What is it you hope to achieve, divorced from the inevitability of death?”
His frown deepened along with his confoundment. Worse, he felt light-headed. Lost too much blood. Spent too much effort trying to haggle with a Goddess. Trying to make her understand a concept that couldn’t be simpler to his human mind.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“I never want to be afraid again.”
The smile-shaped shadow somehow widened some more.
“And you think that this is the solution? To conquering your fears?”
“Yes,” the boy croaked, irritation rising to the fore. What was so hard to understand? “If I know I won’t die, then I have no reason—no reason to be afraid.”
The boy shuddered as he finished his thought. He rubbed his bloodied face with the same hand that held the Amulet, willing away the tears that had gushed unbidden. Stop! He mustn’t cry. He mustn’t show weakness, especially not before an almighty goddess.
From beyond the fog, two shadowed orbs stared into the boy. Drank in the sight of his broken body, his battle wounds, his unbidden tears. Then the Snake Goddess twirled in place once more before the music of her words rose in pitch and cadence.
“Heed me well and heed me true, for I shall speak this only once:
Upon a hill swept by plum blossoms,
Under the blade of a crescent moon.
Amidst a sea of rippling silvergrass,
And in tired arms may a maiden swoon.
That is the place and manner by which you’ll meet your end, child. Make of it what you will. Now leave my trinket and begone.”
In his desperation, the boy inched closer to the cave’s entrance, his nose nearly touching the impenetrable fog. His lips worked furiously, repeating the Snake Goddess’s riddle like a mantra. Suddenly, he drew back, wincing as though he’d been hit, and stared back at the shadowed orbs with an indignant glare.
“Wait, that’s it?” he shouted. “This isn’t what we agreed to!”
“Immortality,” the Snake Goddess sang. “It’s what you asked for. It’s what you received. Now, begone.”
The fog erupted into smoke. The smoke covered the boy and everything around him. He braced himself against the Goddess’s magic, clutching her Amulet tight to his chest as he did. But when next he opened his swollen eyes, the smoke had cleared, and gone too were the Goddess, her cave, and her—
“The Amulet!”
It too was gone. His one good hand now clutched at nothing, left with only a pale band-like imprint, which too faded in no time. His hard-fought prize. Won only at the end of a fierce and deadly battle. And for what? What did he have to show for it?
The boy slumped on the jungle floor, wincing at the pain that he’d hitherto managed to push away. No more. With the Goddess gone, and his one hope with her, the pain came back to him full force. Bereft, humiliated, hurting, the boy did the only thing he could think to do.
He cried.
He cried and cried: sobbing, wailing, cursing. His cry rang through the jungle, surely alerting all manner of dangerous beasts and unsavoury characters. But he didn’t care. He was dying, for heaven’s sake! He’d gone through the trouble of getting himself killed, and all he got in return was some lousy poem. A poem that—
The boy suddenly sat up straight. With round teary eyes, he scanned his surroundings: gnarled roots, dense canopy, and hanging vines. Then he tried to picture the place described in the Snake Goddess’s poem… and found that he couldn’t.
Of course. Because he’d never been to such a place. A hill swept by plum blossoms? Rippling silvergrass? Those surely referred to some distant land, far removed from the muddy farmstead that comprised the extent of the world he knew. A crescent moon? As far as he knew, a moon was crescent-shaped for only a few nights at a time. Which left all the other nights for him to roam about freely. As for the maiden… well, that was the silliest notion of all. As if a maiden would swoon in his arms, tired or no.
Soon enough, damp chuckles mixed with the weeping, until the sobs made way entirely for full-throated laughter. For it was he that had been slow to understand. The Snake Goddess had held up her end of the bargain, alright. He’d just been too wrapped up in his fears to see it.
The pain was still there, but it no longer frightened him. Blood would clot. Cuts would heal. Bones would mend themselves. There was no reason to fear. Because he’d conquered death itself.
The boy sat upon the jungle floor for some time, lost in thought. The laughter too had faded, settling into a bemused sort of smile that curled his lips on one side. This was good. This was what he’d wanted and earned, fair and square. He’d give himself a short while to acclimate to his new reality, then it’d be time to leave this dismal jungle behind, to step off into the rest of his glorious and infinite life.
Yet, try as he might to quell them, the tears continued to fall, silent and unbidden.